TikTok is no longer just a Gen Z playground, it’s a global powerhouse with over a billion monthly active users.
It has become an essential tool for businesses of all sizes to connect with audiences, boost brand awareness, and drive sales.
With its viral content, TikTok offers brands a unique opportunity to engage with consumers in creative and trendsetting ways.
As a result, taking the platform seriously is no longer optional.
However, TikTok’s rapid growth can make it difficult for businesses to keep up.
This is where TikTok monitoring becomes crucial for marketing success.
From tracking trending sounds and influencer collaborations to measuring the performance of your own content, TikTok monitoring provides the insights needed to stay ahead of the competition and adapt your strategy whenever needed.
What is TikTok monitoring?
TikTok monitoring is the process of tracking different activities and performance metrics on the platform to gain insights into how well your content and your brand are performing.
It involves keeping a close eye on mentions, hashtags, trends, user engagement, and competitor activity to understand what’s working, what’s not, and what opportunities exist to grow your brand on TikTok.
Here’s a list of the most important, but not complete, key elements to track for successful TikTok monitoring.
1. Mentions – Track whenever your brand or product is mentioned in TikTok videos or comments.
Helpful for understanding brand perception and spotting loyal fans.
2. Hashtags – Monitor relevant hashtags to stay updated on trending content and user discussions.
Helpful for joining popular and related conversations and identifying key topics your audience cares about.
3. Trends – Keep an eye on viral trends to quickly adapt your content strategy.
Helpful for increasing visibility by aligning with what’s currently popular on the platform.
4. User Engagement – Analyze likes, shares, comments, and views to understand audience interactions with your content.
Helpful for identifying what resonates with your audience, and guiding future content for better alignment.
5. Competitor Activity – Keep track of your competitors’ content, engagement, and trends.
Helpful for refining your strategy based on what’s working in your industry and finding content gaps between you and the competitors.
Read More: How To Calculate TikTok Engagement Rate? (Formula + Free Calculator)
Why TikTok monitoring is essential for brands
All right, so now you know what TikTok monitoring is and some of its key elements.
But you might still be asking yourself, “Is TikTok monitoring really that important for my brand? And if so, why?”
The answer is yes, it’s definitely important!
Here’s a quick look at why TikTok monitoring can make a big difference for your brand:
1. Brand awareness
TikTok monitoring helps you track how often and where your brand is being mentioned. This gives you a clear view of your visibility on the platform and helps you identify ways to increase brand awareness by engaging with your audience and joining relevant trends.
2. Reputation management
Keeping an eye on brand mentions allows you to understand how people feel about your brand. Whether feedback is positive, negative, or natural, monitoring lets you address issues quickly and manage your brand’s reputation effectively.
3. Content Optimization
Tracking engagement metrics like likes, comments, and shares helps you identify which content resonates with your audience and which doesn’t. Tools like TikTok ads library can help you find the best performing ads, so you can better understand what went right With this information, you can refine your content strategy, focusing on the types of content that deliver results while improving or avoiding those that don’t.
4. Competitor Analysis
TikTok monitoring doesn’t just give you insights into your own performance—it also allows you to see what your competitors are doing. You can analyze their strategies, learn from their successes or mistakes, and find ways to stand out in your niche.
5. Influencer Collaboration
If you’re partnering with influencers, TikTok monitoring helps you track the success of their past campaigns. It shows you how their content is performing and whether it’s driving the results you’re looking for, allowing you to make informed decisions about future collaborations.
To really take advantage of these benefits, doing it all manually isn’t possible, or at least, isn’t practical.
That’s where TikTok monitoring tools come in. There are plenty out there, but not all of them have the same qualities and features.
Before we analyze the best ones we choose for this article, let’s first look at the key features an ideal TikTok monitoring tool should have, so you can make an informed decision.
Features to look for in TikTok monitoring tools
When selecting a TikTok monitoring tool, there are a few must-have features.
1. Real-time analytics and reporting
TikTok moves fast. What is trending today, can be irrelevant tomorrow. Trends come and go in a flash. With TikTok, you don’t have the luxury of waiting a lot until the tool brings you the analytics. The right tool gives you live data, helping you adjust your content strategy instantly. You’ll know what’s working and what’s not, right when it happens.
That’s why real-time analytics are critical and it’s number one on the list.
2. Sentiment analysis for brand mentions
It’s great when your brand is mentioned, but how do people feel about it? Because the reality is not always positive. Sentiment analysis helps you understand whether mentions are positive, negative, or neutral.
This allows you to respond quickly, manage your brand image, capitalize on positive feedback, and work on improving the negative ones.
3. Tracking relevant hashtags
Hashtags drive discoverability
A good monitoring tool tracks the performance of hashtags and keywords relevant to your brand, so you can jump on trends while they’re hot.
4. Competitor performance insights
We all want to know how our competitors are doing, aren’t we?
A TikTok monitoring tool with competitor analysis shows what they’re posting and how well it’s performing. This helps you identify opportunities and gaps in your own strategy as well as find and use blindspots of your competitors’ strategies that they miss and use them to be ahead.
5. Metrics on audience engagement and content performance
Engagement is everything. The best monitoring tools track likes, comments, shares, and saves. This data helps you refine your content, making it more engaging for your audience.
6. Integration with other tools
If you’re managing multiple brands for clients, the ability to integrate TikTok monitoring with white label marketing tools is a must. This feature allows you to offer TikTok insights within your larger marketing solutions, maintaining consistency in branding and providing powerful analytics to your clients at the same time.
Top TikTok monitoring tools for brands
1. Keyhole
Keyhole is a robust social media monitoring tool that offers real-time tracking of hashtags, keywords, and mentions.
For TikTok, it allows you to monitor your brand’s visibility, track campaign performance, and see how your content stacks up against competitors. Its analytics dashboard provides actionable insights into audience engagement, allowing you to adjust your content strategy quickly. Keyhole also offers influencer tracking, making it easier to gauge the impact of influencer partnerships on TikTok.
- Best for: Hashtag tracking, competitor analysis, and influencer campaigns.
- Key feature: Real-time analytics and tracking of hashtags and keywords.
Pricing: Custom
2. ContentStudio
ContentStudio is a social media management tool, its TikTok monitoring capabilities offer a detailed view into audience engagement, follower growth, and content performance, allowing brands to track trends and optimize strategies. It includes competitor analysis and benchmarking, enabling users to see how their TikTok presence stacks up against industry standards and competitors. With automated reporting and customizable insights, it’s designed for both in-house teams and client-facing reports, providing data-driven guidance to improve content and engagement.
- Best for: White label reports and group reports.
- Key feature: In-depth TikTok analytics with customizable and automated reports.
Pricing: $25/month
3. Socialinsider
Socialinsider offers in-depth competitor analysis, allowing you to benchmark your brand’s performance against TikTok benchmarks and other players in your niche. This tool helps you track critical TikTok metrics such as views, engagement rates, and follower growth for both your account and your competitors.
By comparing your performance to others and established TikTok benchmarks, Socialinsider helps you identify content gaps and refine your strategy to stay competitive. It also provides insights into the types of content that are working for your competitors, giving you ideas to improve your own.
- Best for: Competitor benchmarking and performance analysis.
- Key feature: Comprehensive competitor insights for TikTok.
Pricing: $82/month.
4. Brand24
Brand24 is designed to track online mentions and sentiment analysis, making it ideal for brands that want to keep a close eye on their reputation. The tool helps you monitor what people are saying about your brand across social platforms, including TikTok.
Its sentiment analysis feature allows you to gauge whether the conversations around your brand are positive, neutral, or negative. You can also track mentions of specific products or services, giving you the ability to respond quickly to feedback, trends, or potential crises.
- Best for: Reputation management and sentiment analysis.
- Key feature: Detailed sentiment analysis to track brand health.
Pricing: $149/month.
5. YouScan
YouScan takes monitoring a step further with its focus on visual content analysis. TikTok is a highly visual platform, and YouScan helps you understand how your brand is represented in images and videos. In addition to tracking mentions, it scans for logos and other brand-related visuals, giving you a complete picture of your brand’s presence on TikTok.
The tool is great for identifying user-generated content and monitoring trends that involve your brand, allowing you to capitalize on organic marketing opportunities.
- Best for: Visual content tracking and user-generated content analysis.
- Key feature: AI-powered visual recognition for deeper insights into how your brand appears on TikTok.
Pricing: $299/month.
Conclusion
The saying “What gets measured gets improved” is still relevant today, especially on TikTok.
If you’re serious about rising to the top and turning TikTok into a powerful lead source for your business then ignoring TikTok monitoring is ignorance on your part.
Start tracking your success on TikTok today with Keyhole.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. How can TikTok monitoring be used to identify potential influencers or brand ambassadors?
With TikTok monitoring you can spot influencers who consistently get high engagement from your target audience. This allows you to find authentic brand advocates who resonate with your audience.
2. What role does TikTok monitoring play in A/B testing content types?
TikTok monitoring allows you to test different content formats (e.g., challenges, tutorials, UGC) and measure which types resonate best. By closely tracking engagement and feedback, you can fine-tune content strategy based on real-time audience preferences.
3. How can TikTok monitoring support brand sentiment analysis?
Beyond simple engagement, TikTok monitoring tools with sentiment analysis capabilities can assess the tone of comments, captions, and reactions. This provides a nuanced view of how audiences feel and think about your brand.
4. How frequently should I monitor TikTok?
TikTok monitoring should be daily. If not possible, it can be weekly. So you can catch trends early and respond to mentions quickly. Frequent monitoring helps maintain your brand's relevancy.
